‘Grand vase aux femmes voilées’, the top lot at the sale of the Madoura Collection of Picasso ceramics at Christie’s South Kensington. It sold at £650,000.
The two-day white-glove sale on June 25 and 26 greatly exceeded the pre-sale target of £1.78m-2.68m to realise £6.5m, with many of the 543 lots fetching multi-estimate prices.
The top lot was Grand vase aux femmes voilées, a 2ft 1in (68cm) work conceived in 1950 and executed in an edition of 25, which sold for £650,000 against a £70,000-100,000 estimate.
This is a new world record price for a Picasso ceramic edition at auction, breaking the previous high for an edition of Grand vase aux danseurs, which sold in December 2010 for €260,000 at Sotheby's Paris.
A full report will appear in next weeks ATG.
The buyer's premium was 25/20/12%.
